China's 'true giant of the faith' dies

The underground Bishop of Shanghai, Joseph Fan Zhongliang, has died at age 97 following decades of imprisonment and house arrest. Communist officials refused him a funeral at the city's cathedral.

- Associated Press/AFP

Joseph Fan Zhongliang, Bishop of Shanghai.

Bishop Fan died at his apartment in the company of priests and lay people following a brief illness, the US-based Cardinal Kung Foundation and the unofficial website Chinacath.org reported.

Born in 1918, Fan was baptised a Catholic in 1932 and ordained a Jesuit priest in 1951, two years after the Communists seized power. Arrested in 1955 after party leader Mao Zedong ordered Chinese Catholics to cut all ties with the Vatican, he was sentenced to 20 years in prison for counter-revolutionary crimes and forced to work at a labour camp mortuary in Qinghai province .

After finishing his sentence, Bishop Fan was assigned to teach at a school for the children of party officials. He was permitted to return to Shanghai in 1985 under Deng Xiaoping.

Bishop Fan was appointed Shanghai's bishop by Pope John Paul II in 2000, but was refused recognition by the Communist Party-controlled Catholic Patriotic Association that oversees the Church on the mainland.

The Bishop was immediately placed under house arrest and another priest, Aloysius Jin Luxian , was named bishop. Beijing rejects the Vatican's right to appoint bishops and the two sides have no formal ties.

The mainland has an estimated eight million to 12 million Catholics, around half of whom worship in congregations outside the control of the Catholic Patriotic Association.

Jin's successor, Thaddeus Ma Daqin, has not been seen in public since being taken into custody in 2012 after declaring his withdrawal from the Association at his ordination ceremony, shocking and angering officials. He is believed to be held at Shanghai's Sheshan Seminary.